State Senate candidate Erin Lynch, center, of Warwick, yesterday awaits the Board of Elections’ decision in her race against David Bennett.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — The Supreme Court yesterday ordered the state Board of Elections to recount all ballots cast in the disputed West Warwick Democratic primary race in which political newcomer Michael Pinga defeated state Sen. Stephen D. Alves.

The amended court order mirrors one issued Wednesday in the case of a candidate for state Senate in Warwick, David Bennett, who lost his bid for a place on the November ballot to Erin Lynch in the Sept. 9 primary.

Both orders require the recounting of all provisional, mail and regular ballots cast. In addition, the court ordered the state Board of Elections to examine any ballots rejected by the optical scanning machines to determine which candidate, if any, the voters intended to choose but failed to mark correctly.

The Bennett-Lynch race will be counted today at 9 a.m., and the Alves-Pinga race will be counted at 1 p.m.

Meanwhile, state Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch Wednesday asked the Rhode Island State Police to investigate the registered Republicans who were allowed to vote in the Democratic primaries in both races.

The fact that Republicans were allowed to vote in a Democratic primary is not only problematic, it’s a crime, Lynch asserted in an interview yesterday.

On election night, Alves, the influential chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, lost by 17 votes. Bennett, candidate for the District 31 seat to be vacated after four decades by John C. Revens, lost by 10 votes. Both Alves and Bennett called for a recount.

During that recount, the Board of Elections hand-fed thousands of ballots cast in both races into voting machines. The board, over the objections of Angel Taveras, lawyer for both Alves and Bennett, did not recount mail or provisional ballots, citing state law that the board interprets to say it does not have to.

The recounts affirmed the results, but gave different final vote totals in both races.

Alves received 977 votes to Pinga’s 996, raising his margin to 19. A third candidate, Paul Caianiello Jr. received 110 votes in the race.

In Bennett’s case, he lost a vote, increasing Lynch’s winning margin to 11. Bennett had 848 votes to Lynch’s 859.

Bennett and Alves protested the results and asked that new elections be held because they found that more ballots had been cast than ballot applications signed by voters. Also, they found that some signatures on ballot applications were the names of Republicans who had been allowed to cast votes in both races.

During a hearing involving the Alves protest, West Warwick’s deputy town clerk reported to the state Board of Elections that 13 Republicans had voted in the Democratic primary. Taveras reviewed each of the nearly 2,000 ballot applications, finding the signatures of two more Republicans who apparently voted. Taveras also told the board that there were three more Democratic ballots cast without corresponding ballot applications, creating a total of 18 questionable ballots.

In the Bennett hearing, Taveras said that his comparison of numbers from the Board of Elections and from the Warwick Board of Canvassers showed that 31 ballots were cast without signed application forms. He said that as many as 19 Republicans voted in that Democratic primary.

“This isn’t an isolated mistake,” Lynch, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, said. “There are [many] separate instances where Republicans signed for Democratic blue ballots and voted in the Democratic primary. That’s no mistake.”

Polling locations are staffed by volunteers who are trained weeks before the election, Robert Kando, executive director of the Board of Elections, said yesterday. Primaries, which occur every two years, are difficult to run because workers have to go through an extra verification step to check party affiliation, he said. Ballots are miscast at least once in every primary, he said, which he attributes to human error.

“All of our poll workers give us their best effort,” he said. “Sometimes they make mistakes.”

Kando also noted that provisions are in place to help prevent the errors. Parties can submit a list of poll workers to staff the locations, and they are also permitted to have a “watcher” at each poll on Election Day to check the names of potential voters against a list of eligible residents.

However, Lynch said the law isn’t as lenient. Rhode Island law considers it a felony to vote in any election that an individual “knows or should know” that he or she is not eligible to vote.

“I think if you’re a registered Republican, you know enough not to vote in the Democratic primary,” he said. “I know enough not to vote in the Republican primary.”

The Board of Elections denied Alves and Bennett’s requests for new elections, prompting the candidates to file an appeal with the state Supreme Court.

The court on Wednesday ordered a recount in Bennett’s case, and yesterday expanded that order to require the board to inspect rejected ballots. Alves’ case was initially seen by a duty judge, who handles cases when the full court isn’t in session and ordered that a stay be granted to allow the court time to consider the case. Four justices reviewed the case yesterday and expanded that order to include the full recount. Though the order conflicts with the Board of Elections’ position, Chairman John Daluz said they will comply.

“We don’t want to do anything that would infuriate or upset the court in any way, shape or form,” he said. “We know our responsibilities and we’ll try to fill them. Then it will be up to the court to determine what happens.”

tbuford@projo.com